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7 lesser-known Vintage Classics by women

Iza's Ballad

A profoundly moving novel with the unforgettable power of Szabó’s award-winning The Door.

[A] heartbreakingly beautiful novel… George Szirtes conveys both the sophistication and simplicity of Szabó’s narrative in a superb translation… Humble, wistful Ettie is a wonderful creation… Just as The Door won an immediate English-language following, Iza’s Ballad is bound to become one of the most loved books of the year… This publication of Iza’s Ballad, subtle and profound, is a cause for celebration

The writing has a lovely clarity and a relevance that is timeless

Szabo nails with incisive clarity the painful dynamics between the two [central] characters… A perceptive study of family relationships, bereavement and old age, it is harrowingly beautiful

A ruthless exploration of the damage we inflict on one another in the name of love

Szabo…is a rare voice, and this novel about the death of tradition and hope is a marvel of empathy

Magda Szabó was born in 1917 in Debrecen, Hungary. She began her literary career as a poet. In the 1950s she disappeared from the publishing scene for political reasons and made her living by teaching and translating from French and English. She began writing novels, and in 1978 was awarded the Kossuth Prize, the most prestigious literary award in Hungary. Magda Szabó died in 2007.

When Ettie's husband dies, her daughter Iza insists that her mother give up the family house in the countryside and move to Budapest. Displaced from her community and her home, Ettie tries to find her place in this new life, but can't seem to get it right. She irritates the maid, hangs food outside the window because she mistrusts the fridge and, in her naivety and loneliness, invites a prostitute in for tea. 
 
Iza’s Ballad is the story of a woman who loses her life’s companion and a mother trying to get close to a daughter whom she has never truly known. It is about the meeting of the old-fashioned and the modern worlds and the beliefs we construct over a lifetime.

Magda Szabó

Len Rix

Nothing is more mysterious than another human soul. 
 
Magda is a writer, Emerence her housekeeper. Magda is new to their quiet Hungarian town, while Emerence, fierce and enigmatic, knows and is known by all. Though she enters Magda’s home whenever she pleases, the door to Emerence’s own strange abode remains barred. Still, somehow, over the course of twenty years, an intimate trust is built between the two, rich with secrets. 
 
Yet when this trust is betrayed one dark afternoon, the pair’s complex relationship will be left forever altered, and Magda will find herself haunted until the end of her days. For not all doors are made to be opened. 
 
'A dark domestic fairy tale' New York Times 
 
Translated by Len Rix

The Door

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7 lesser-known Vintage Classics by women

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